


That They Exist

by NightmareAmpersand



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asimovian sci-fi, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Science, epidemic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 22:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5266709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightmareAmpersand/pseuds/NightmareAmpersand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What defines the boundaries between 'we' and 'they'?  Is it the color of our skin?  The composition of our bodies?  The method in which we are created?  I was pulled from my designation to be a messenger, a distraction, and a scapegoat.  My orders were clear.  Watch until there is nothing more to watch.  I have followed this.  Yet these questions refuse to remain unanswered.  I am proof of existence.  So are they.  So is she...</p><p>I am Finial Omega of Laboratory 21.  I was designated as tertiary Recorder.  These are my observances, the history of a dying colony and the birth of a new sentience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That They Exist

**Author's Note:**

> As is usual with a story packed with technical terms and ideas, I can't take credit for everything described in here. The Laws of Robotics (not explicitly mentioned in here, but shown by intention) originated from Isaac Asimov. The method of Quantum Entanglement is an extension of what was used in "Mass Effect 2" by Bioware. The mechanics of near-light, FTL, and time dilation come from several sources, but the two prominent ones for me are Orson Scott Card's "Enders' Game", "Ender's Shadow" (the full series), and "Speaker For The Dead" (the full series) as well as the anime "Gunbuster" from Gainax studios. I'm certain I've gotten bits and pieces of ideas from any other number of sources, but I wouldn't know who or what to mention as I haven't pulled something intentionally.

               The encoded QE message came to Laboratory 21 at 1832 hours, local time. Given the priority of urgency, it went straight to the Photo-Reflexic (PhoRef, to many) receiver of CMD Dr. Elwiss, who had been leaving, already late for the charity ball he was supposed to be the keynote speaker for. He never made it to that ball, and he regretted that it gave his successor, Dr. Langston, the necessary impetus to become the one who would succeed him a mere three years from that night. What Dr. Langston never had was that message, along with the personal accolades that eventually passed over him and fell directly onto CMD Dr. Elwiss, though posthumously in both cases.

                _Light is dying. We need help. Please, save us._

                Light was the colloquial name for IQS (Inter-Quantum Star) 2275. It was a time of pioneering when it had been settled, 500 years prior to that fateful message. The Quantum Entanglement had at last grown from theory to useful, practical technology. At first it was used to transmit data in increasingly larger packets. The next step was for it to send matter, starting at the atomic level then working out to transmit colony ships full of hopeful settlers. Relativistic flight, fraught with the pain of the inevitable time dilation, was easily given up for this near instantaneous travel. Certainly, several colony ships and all passengers on board were lost when the quantum links would sometimes inexplicably snap, but many thousands more reached their destinations, having then to only endure short relativistic hops to search for suitable planets and stars within a certain distance of the QE endpoint, losing at most a year in this search. IQS 2275 was the only habitable planet within the relativistic reach of QE endpoint 2275.

                A chronicler for that colony ship, the _Aurora Ray_ , sent back along the QE line the wonder of Light’s discovery.

  * _The absurdly high albedo of this star beckoned us from the moment we stepped out of the QE. We thought it at first to be unsuitable even for terraforming…certainly such a high albedo was the result of an extreme amount of light and heavy metals on the surface? It was only two months (RT) from the QE, so Captain Marloe and Luminary Xie agreed to give it a closer look, if for no other reason than the chance that a terraformiable world might lay within easy reach of such mineral wealth. Our gamble paid off a thousandfold. We beheld a planet that sparkled with the kind of radiance of a million million diamonds, reflecting from the glow of an orange primary star. The reflection came from everywhere: from the vast turquoise seas, from viridian plains, from translucent ice fields, but most of all from hectares upon hectares of silvery grass, rippling amongst verdant soil and sandy dunes. This Light supported infinite life…could it not also support us?_




The question this chronicler spoke was swiftly answered. Though outside of the typical CHZ of the primary star, this planet carried all the essentials to support carbon-based lifeforms. The _Aurora Ray_ swiftly colonized the planet, keeping the chronicler’s name of ‘Light’. Once news of their successful adaptation returned to Homestar Earth (‘IQS 1’) and Laboratory 21 (‘IQS 21’), they were left to thrive in peace.

                CMD Dr. Elwiss sat motionless in his chair for a full half hour upon listening to the nine-word message given by Light’s Luminary of the day. Most of his thinking was likely on the opportunity he had just missed by not speaking at the charity ball, but he did at least spend some thought upon Light and its people. I know this, for I was called into his office at 1945 hours, just a little over a standard hour from when his PhoRef lit up with the message. I had been present at Laboratory 21 for a total of 144 days and 19 hours by that point, and I had not yet been assigned any permanent duties. Mostly, up until that point, I was a standby recorder; the second or third in line when one of the doctors wanted everything they were doing on some sort of permanent record. This was usually (but not always) in conjunction with some experiment or trial study. That night was the very first time I’d seen CMD Dr. Elwiss in person, let alone talked to him. I reported to his office the moment I received the summons, and knew upon entering that he was as lost in addressing me as I might be to him.

                “Please, come in, sit…” Dr. Elwiss seemed the classical picture of a scientist turned primarily to business matters. He was short and slightly paunchy, wearing a dress dinner suit underneath a starchy white lab coat. Brown eyes behind fashionable rimless glasses had lost none of their keen inquisitiveness, analyzing and dissecting every word and action, whether coming from a research doctor or a Homeworld senator. Even in his uncertainty he regarded me with that piercing analytical gaze, missing nothing of my appearance or bearing. “You are the one that the Custodian sent up? What is your name and designation?”

                “I am Finial Omega, Dr. Elwiss. I have been temporarily assigned as a tertiary Recorder. My permanent designation is still pending.”

                “Yes…well, tonight will certainly fix that. I have a special permanent assignment for you, Finial…may I call you that?”

                “You may, Dr. Elwiss, though many of the others simply call me ‘Omega’.”

                “Then that is what I shall call you as well. Now, Omega, I have a permanent designation for you. You will leave tonight for IQS 2275, otherwise known as ‘Light’. They have sent me a distress message, requesting aid, and you will carry Laboratory 21’s response.”

                “I must notify you that I have received no training in emergency aid, either for disaster or medical.”

                “That’s fine, that’s fine…” He waved away my objection impatiently, as if the fact were no more than a bothersome fly. “You are not being sent to provide aid. You are only carrying Laboratory 21’s response to their call.”

                “Very well, Dr. Elwiss. Am I to return here once the message has been received?”

                “No. You are to be permanently designated as Recorder to IQS 2275. Any observations you make there are to be sent back here.” Dr. Elwiss looked at his desktop chronometer and seemed impatient. “Your flight will leave in half an hour, Omega. This is the message that you will give to IQS 2275’s Luminary upon arrival.” He handed me a PhoRef data chip, sealed in an encrypted case. It was not for me to look at. “And this contains your instructions. You are not to view this until you are on the relativistic hop.” He handed me a second PhoRef chip, this one unencrypted. “You’d best hurry to your flight.”

                The initial flight took less than two days. It involved two QE jumps, so the only delay came in the spaceflight between the jump points. The relativistic flight between QE endpoint 2275 and Light took the most time. Though two months passed in real time, the flight itself was barely long enough for me to play the message Dr. Elwiss had recorded…my instructions concerning the settlers of Light.

                _“I will be brief, and I will be blunt. Please, do not mistake this message or the message for the Luminary as unkindness. I have told the Luminary that there will be no possibility of aid for the settlers of IQS 2275. They are diseased, and I will not risk any exposure to the Homeworld or any other world. You are to remain as a Recorder after your duty of messenger is carried out. You will observe the progression and spread of this disease, and you will also observe the failure of the colony. This data can be used to inoculate against this disease, should it manage to escape IQS 2275, and the colony failure data can be used to prevent similar situations when new colonies are established. Do you understand…observing the deaths of these few hundred humans will result in the ensured existence of trillions of others. Ensure these orders are carried out, Recorder.”_

                I felt saddened as the recording flickered out, destroying itself and leaving no evidence behind. That he had to emphasize so strongly the ratio of lives lost versus lives potentially saved was necessary, though I did not feel any more comfortable with the decision. The fact that I would never return to Laboratory 21 was left unsaid, but was well understood. I would witness the extinction of the colony, then I would be expected to extinguish myself.

                By the time my descent shuttle had touched the ground of Light, two months and three days had elapsed since Light’s cry for help. Within that time, QE 2275 had been severed, ensuring that even if the settlers found a way to escape the atmosphere, they would never again join the human race scattered among the many stars. Dr. Elwiss had made two public statements about ‘IQS 2275’. The first, made to the general public, stated that though it was regrettable, the colony had been labeled as a lost cause, and that one of their best was on the way there now to make their final years as pleasant and painless as possible. Terms, such as ‘heartbreaking valor’ and ‘steadfast, noble sacrifice’ made for buzzworthy headlines, and the story captured the public’s attention for a full week before the next major story broke. The second statement had reached only the scientific community. This one came slightly closer to the truth, revealing that a Recorder had been sent to watch the mysterious disease progress and to watch the end-life cycle of a colony, and that findings from both sets of observations would be made available as needed. If any scientist receiving that statement had any qualms of ethics or morality, they either kept it to themselves or were quietly removed to somewhere they could do no harm. Light received neither of these statements, as the QE had been severed. The only communication possible was through radio transmission, and nobody seemed to care enough to broadcast the news via that archaic method.

                They met me on my arrival at the outskirts of the colony. Not simply an envoy or a delegation, but a crush of two hundred and twenty seven people, all but a few of the remaining colonists. They were as different from humans as I was to them. It was clear that Light had aggressively taken hold of its new occupants and had steadily changed them into their current state. They were uniformly pale, with skin that had become translucent enough to see the shadow of muscle, bone, and organs. Their hair, too, was pale throughout, ranging from a silvery sheen to true transparency, making it seem almost crystalline. Their most distinguishing difference was what Dr. Elwiss had called their disease. Every person in that crowd, from the most newborn to the eldest grandparent, was swathed with great patches of skin disfiguration, giving them an overall nightmarish look. The patches were smooth, not scaly, and ranged in color from burnished copper to obsidian. In some cases, I could see where they had begun to cover essential orifices, such as the eyes, nose, and mouth. No doubt that once it progressed far enough, a person would starve or suffocate. It made me feel all the worse for the necessity to carry out my assigned mission.

“Honored Luminary and citizens of Light, I am Finial Omega of Laboratory 21. I bring you their response to your distress message.” I proffered the encrypted data chip to the two in front, the Luminary and his assistant. They Luminary, a man that was into his middle age, stepped forward and received the data chip with all the gravity of a ceremonial ritual.

                “Finial Omega, representative of Laboratory 21, I and the citizens of Light thank you for your journey in delivering our response. I am certain we all eagerly await a favorable answer…”

                A young woman who bore familial resemblance to the Luminary strode forward to stand beside him. She looked agitated…upset and anger, foremost…and though she faced the Luminary her words were clearly aimed at me. “’Favorable answer’? Why mince words, Father? We knew from the time we sent off that distress call they wouldn’t listen to us.”

                “We _suspected_ , dear heart. We cannot see the future, after all. They still replied, and in person, no less…”

                “ _Person_?” Her single derisive word and single sarcastic laugh were echoed by a grumbling of malcontent from the crowd. “Father, if anything else were to seal our fate, it is the very fact that they sent us one of  Them! They would have been kinder to send a Genexirpater…wipe out all of us at once, rather than live and slowly die out for their pleasure!”

                Them…a name I’d been called before, though it was in fact the kinder of the derisive names. I had indeed sealed their fate with my very presence among them, no doubt an additional orchestration by Dr. Elwiss. A fellow human would have meant hope, a possible salvation. I was merely designated to record, to observe, the fall of a colony, one which would happen over the course of a hundred years or so. No human observer could keep that task. I, on the other hand, could.

                Them.

                A robot.

                My kind had looked human at one point, enough to the point where we could factually be indistinguishable from humans. This unnerved a great many of them, so our design was reworked to its present state. All suggestion of masculinity or femininity was taken out of our forms and speech. Our skin could never again match any human hue…mine has a distinct mercury-like sheen. Our faces, though retaining human appearance and movement, was rendered to something alien, with complete androgyny, our eyes no longer allowed to have irises or pupils and were instead covered completely to match our skin. Though many humans no doubt felt our new appearance just as unnerving as our old, we had remained this way for a handful of centuries.

                Us and them. They and us. It was ceaseless…a struggle to them, an acceptance of fact to us.

                “Finial Omega.” The Luminary spoke again, seeming to ignore his daughter’s continued objections. “I understand the gravity of the task that has been laid upon you with the message. Whatever the outcome of Laboratory 21’s decision, I wish you to know that you will be welcomed here on Light as a citizen of equal standing.” This, though spoken to me, was clearly for the benefit of the gathered town, though it was just as obviously considered rather distasteful among them.

                “You are far too kind, Honored Luminary. I shall strive to become a productive citizen for Light, that I might prove eventual worth to you.”

                “Ah…but you have already proven your worth, Finial Omega.” He threw me a sad smile as he turned to walk back to the town with his people. “You have given us proof that we do, and will continue to, exist.”

  
 

 


	2. The Last of 'They'

                One-hundred and eighteen of Light’s citizens were dead by the morning after my arrival.

                The Luminary had played Dr. Elwiss’ message to them on the community PhoRef within an hour of my arrival. As expected, he professed “great sorrow” and “unfathomable regret” as the fact that Laboratory 21 could not…would not…be able to do anything for them in their hour of need. That their QE had already been severed. That their “brave sacrifice” would benefit countless other humans and colonies in the known and yet-to-be-discovered universe. That he had sent me to be a comfort in the colony’s final years, that I would record and transmit via radio signal everything that would happen, all the data they could give me and all that I could personally gather. That they should remain hopeful that the data I transmitted could possibly lead to a cure within their lifetime, before the colony fell.

                Not one person believed him. Neither, for that matter, did I, but I was still obligated to my mission.

                One-hundred and eighteen bodies to bury. I helped to dig the graves over the course of the week. I helped to clean and prepare their bodies. So many methods of suicide…the children were primarily poisoned, likely by the parents and older siblings we found near them. Some were suffocated. Many of the adults seemed to choose more violent methods, as if the last pain they endured could inject some meaning to their life and death.

                One-hundred and nine citizens of Light chose to live beyond that first day. Some clung to the faint sliver of hope that the data I gathered could be put to good use, perhaps even a cure for them. These were the ones who opened up to me first. Before I’d built a modest hut for myself, these families welcomed me in, talked to me, treated me as a welcomed guest. I stayed with these sort of people for about a year, and I learned much from them. Perhaps not the things Laboratory 21 would be interested in…though I routinely sent off all the data I’d gathered, as per my designation…but the finer intricacies of family and community and humanity as a whole. They taught me their trades: farmers, weavers, cobblers, bakers, metalsmiths, engineers, doctors, leaders. Within a short time I was helping them as much as I could in their daily lives, doing whatever was needed if I knew the job and learning what I’d need to do if I didn’t.

                There were those, too, who never accepted me. That saw me only as a weak, placating gift they had no use or patience for, seeing me as a spy and a traitor to them and their livelihoods. I continued to try to become a friend to them, or at the very least a useful stranger. These men and women, though, seemed consumed by a different sort of despair. They were dying, both as individuals and as a community, and there was absolutely nothing they could do to change this fatal course. Anger came easily, and as a stranger and the messenger of death, I know I was an easy target to them. All I could do, however, was absorb their anger, careful not to let it reflect back upon them, and hope that by venting their grievances and frustrations onto me they could work toward a little bit of peace in their own hearts. Perhaps it worked…I started seeing some of them more and more frequently, and their hostility drained until they simply came to me to talk…after all, I kept all their secrets and passed no judgment on them.

                As they changed towards me, I began to notice within the first five years that I, too, was changing. I already had human-like expressions and emotions, but being exclusively among them encouraged me to act upon these motivations a little bit more. I smiled, I joked, I gave sympathy, I encouraged confidences. Perhaps this sort of social integration was what Laboratory 21 was hoping for…what better way to gather data than by using the secrets told to you in confidence? However, I caught myself editing the data I was sending out. I gave them numbers and charts and percentages, but none of the social data. Nothing personal, only gross physiological or psychological data, accumulated over weeks or months. From them, I received no response.

                Fifty years, the projected half-life left for the colony, slipped by in such a fashion. The colony dwindled at an accelerating rate. Of the one-hundred and nine, sixty-two greeted my fiftieth year among them. The Luminary who had greeted me and kept the colony from immediately turning against me had passed in my sixteenth year. His daughter, a scant few days afterwards. The colony chose not to elect a new Luminary, instead agreeing to agree on what few matters that remained by general consensus. With few left and fewer remaining every year, issues concerning this type of governance cropped up only rarely, then not at all. They all knew they were dying. More passed each year. The disease spread more rapidly. Not nearly enough were born to replace those who died, and even those viable births became rare.

                Though my designation was still Recorder, I’d become so much more in that time. As those passed who hadn’t had time to pass on their skills to a successor, I stepped in to fill those roles: farmer, weaver, cobbler, baker, metalsmith, engineer, doctor. Inevitably, I also received two of the most daunting and critical roles I would ever take: father and mother. More and more of the children of Light were becoming orphans, most right from birth. The other colonists tried to distribute the children for a while, to raise them as a community, but as the disease progressed they all found the task too draining or futile. A few children were killed when the foster parents simply gave up all hope, and that is when I stepped in to relieve them of that burden. The modest hut I’d built for myself grew into a large home as I accommodated more and more of the children of Light. Two full generations of children knew me only as ‘mama’ or ‘papa’ interchangeably by the fiftieth year and knew no other caretaker at all. Perhaps this eased the burdens of the remaining generation from my arrival, for soon they too slipped away.

                Raising these children brought me many complexities. I was neither a mother nor a father; I’d never even been implanted with any maternal or paternal impulses. Years of trial and error, of remembering the family dynamics of the homes I’d stayed at within my earlier years, slowly bore fruit. The children were physically cared for, that much I can attest to with certainty. To watch them grow with that sense of loving security about them, as if they’d been raised by natural parents, was both immensely gratifying and terrifying at the same time. To realize all of a sudden one day that these fine children, the beings I raised and cared for and loved, would someday soon die of the same incurable disease that had taken the generations before them…it was with that realization that I knew I needed the help that Laboratory 21 should have given in the first place. Surely, after fifty years, Dr. Elwiss would be gone and someone more sympathetic would listen. In the fifty-second year after my arrival, I began a desperate campaign of bombarding Laboratory 21 with radio signals, broadcasting all the data I’d accumulated about these people and their disease.

                In my sixty-third year, less than forty citizens of Light remained. All of them were under twenty years of age. New births had occurred, but the children (for that’s how I always thought of them now, regardless of their physical age) were pairing off at younger ages, seemingly desperate to pass along their genetic information. They loved me and trusted me when I said I would do anything to ensure their children would have good lives, whether or not I was able to receive a cure. And, in my sixty-third year, I did receive my answer from Laboratory 21.

                Dr. Elwiss had long since passed, as had his quick successor, Dr. Langston. Dr. van Lincauss now headed Laboratory 21, and while not entirely unsympathetic to my cause, she clearly stated that they could not help in this matter. That said, however, she did piggyback a large amount of medical, genetic, and robotic engineering data to her final transmission, stating that if I truly wanted the children o f Light to live, I would have to do so with the tools I already had. The radio link then closed forever, isolating me along with Light.

               I trusted Dr. van Lincauss, far more than Dr. Elwiss or the unknown Dr. Langston. I began to work feverishly, desperately using all the knowledge and skill I had at my disposal. What I eventually found was not the result of focused knowledge from a single field, but all the knowledge I’d acquired during my stay on Light, both scientific and sociological. Light had everything to do with their metamorphosis. All of the life on Light, from plant to piscine to bacterial to mammal, had at one time held something similar to Earth-like properties, all carbon-based. Their time and growth on Light had changed them radically.

                Light had been far closer to the chroniclers’ assumption than he ever knew. In its’ infancy Light had been a planet of almost pure heavy and light metals. Sometime during that natal stage something happened…perhaps a random mutation in a protein chain or a carbon-based virus contained in a meteorite…that introduced carbon-like properties into this silicate world. From this innocuous source came atmosphere, water, bacterium, and growth. Millennia passed, and the planet became very earth-like. Then, perhaps two or three thousand years ago, another cataclysm happened. The carbon-based lifeforms struggled, many dying out. Those that survived reached out to the planets’ previous inhabitants, all those metals now buried under the crust. They formed a symbiosis and merged to become the planet Light: sapphire and turquoise seas, silver and platinum wheat fields, copper and bronze trees, gold, cadmium, and aluminum fish, nanite-like bacterium infecting and propagating all of it. Survival took precedence, and even Lights’ newest arrivals were not spared from this force evolution.

                I was able to reach this revelation in the seventy-fifth year. With these facts, I began to do everything I could to rescue my remaining children, now numbering only fourteen. My children were so good, but I could tell they no longer held any hope for the future. Everything I tried to reverse the symbiotic process failed. Attempting to block the symbiosis en-utero also failed, and twice caused miscarriage. With only three remaining in the ninetieth year, I came close to giving up myself. My daughter, dying herself, offered to conceive one last time with one of the remaining boys, if I were to try the one thing she requested.

                “Stop fighting it. Embrace it.”

                I did as she asked. How could I not? In the ninety-third year, my brave girl was the last, dying as I delivered our baby girl into the world of Light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As an incredibly convoluted and obscure homage, Dr. van Lincauss stands as my respect and thanks to Isaac Asimov. The name is an anagram for Dr. Susan Calvin, a robotics scientist and psychologist who appeared in many of his earlier short stories and is mentioned throughout many of his other works. Even today, she stands as a really awesome and role-breaking scientist character and she remains one of my favorite sci-fi characters to date.


	3. Extinguish

                I named her Aurora Ray.

                This baby girl, the last of Light, was immediately different from the many others I’d helped to deliver. Her skin, though translucent like her mothers’, already contained great swaths of silver covering. Her organs held the pliancy of tissue, yet already showed that they’d been formed of Lights’ organic/silicate symbiosis. The bones, as well, showed metallic structure and yet yielded with the pliancy that would ensure further growth. Her hair was made of the finest strands of silver crystallite, and her eyes were a piercing silver as well, looking at me with far more cognition than a newborn should have. She truly was Lights’ child.

                And mine.

                That singularly possessive thought did not register with me at first. I cared for her as I had cared for all the other children who had become my wards over time. She wanted for nothing, least of all love and attention. She went everywhere with me those first few years: tending the garden that produced food for her, working in the processing lab to convert the native flora and fauna to fuel and nutrients, around the home tending to chores and busywork. All the while I spoke to her of everything and of nothing at all. She seemed to enjoy the sound of my artificial voice, and as I later learned, she forgot nothing of what I said.

                By her first year she was speaking well, though her grammar and syntax were not quite ready. Her curiosity extended to all things…her two favorite questions were ‘what is that’ and ‘why’. I answered every spoken question as well as a dozen unspoken ones with the infinite patience only a robot could achieve.

                By her second year, she was articulating quite well and forming abstract thoughts and ideas. That year also showed where her development lacked. Though leaps and bounds ahead of any human intellectually, she was suffering physically. It seemed that her bones and muscles, though now integrated with the physiology of Light, were not readily adapting to her growth. Walking was a painful ordeal and simple chores could be difficult or almost impossible for her to do. This worried me endlessly, and I devoted even more time to find a solution, anything to free her from pain and allow her to grow.

                Within her third year I was able to discover the key. I’d been processing the plants and animals of Light to reduce the amount of metallic influence, especially that of the nanite-like bacterium, and this was my folly with her. I gradually began to decrease the amount of processing her food went through, and by her forth year she was sustaining directly from Light’s yields as well as catching up in her physical growth.

                We spent a lot of time outdoors during her fourth and fifth years, as she strove to catch up on all the walking and running and exploring and playing she’d missed up until that point. At first it was simply the settlement we explored. The heart of the settlement, where our home and the labs were, was still well intact and structurally sound. As the radius went further from the center, the buildings began to disappear under Light’s influence. Those closer to the center simply looked abandoned, sporting growths of carbonaceous molds and aggressive beryl creepers. Those further were in various stages of dismantlement and appropriation, until the furthest edges which showed only the faint markings of titanium foundations, the metal itself worked into the grasses and flowers that grew from it.

                It was during one of these explorations at the edges of the settlement that we found the structure she dubbed ‘Yggdrasil’, the World Tree. Towering ninety-eight feet into the sky, it was an intricately networked set of vine-wires twisted around an enormous beryllium trunk, with flowering branches starting at about eight feet and continuing endlessly in fractal-like patterns. Aurora Ray was beside herself with joy at this discovery and spent the entirety of her fifth summer within its branches. I, on the other hand, had been puzzled by it. There had been no tree of any stature this close to Lights’ settlement…the settlers had used the local metallic lumber to expand their town, so the nearest cluster of trees was at least three kilometers away. A tree of this height now would at least have been a noticeable height when I arrived, and certainly I would have noticed it within that first year. It wasn’t until she came down from the branches one day, excitedly telling me about this tiny home she’d found within the trunk, that I was finally able to put the pieces together. Within minutes I was standing with her in a place I’d forgotten about, the data long since dumped to make room for the myriad of other things I’d learned over the years. Though slightly overgrown with those fractal flowers and branches, the tiny cabin of the shuttle that brought me to Light remained unchanged. The tree had grown from it, around it, after it had been moved to the disused rocked yard ninety-eight years ago. It must have grown quickly, at least a foot a year, and that could likely be attributed to the remaining nuclear booster fuel that was used to power the FTL drive and the residual quantum and deep space radiation that survived the descent through the atmosphere. On any other world those energies would have sickened or killed local plant life or dissipated normally, but on this unusual world they were used to build life and accelerate growth.

               Starting in her sixth year, Aurora Ray and I began to take extended trips into the wilderness beyond the settlement. The original settlers never went beyond the area they could cover in three days with a skid, a ground transport built like a motorbike but with skimming skids like a sled, powered with solar energy. Though even the orange sun emitted enough energy to power a skid indefinitely, the settlers could not physically care more than three days’ worth of supplies. Thanks to Light’s unique bioculture, they could not live off the land either. We were free from that particular restriction, so we were able to leave the settlement for weeks at a time.

                Within that three-day radius we found quite a few human skeletons, unlucky explorers from a bygone age. Their bones were distinctly preserved, the proteins and calcium melding with the innate elements to form bones of iron, steel, or a myriad of carbon-based gemstones. Once we even saw one of diamond, wedged into a tight niche in a cliff which had likely closed up on her in life and had reopened sometime recently. Aurora Ray insisted on gathering all these lonely skeletons wherever we found them and return them to the settlement. From there she would arrange them in the old community hall, pieced together carefully by her and laid side-by-side on the floor as if sleeping. When I asked her about this behavior…even the prior citizens of Light had done little more than erect a memorial slate in honor of these pioneers…she simply stated that no one should be forgotten, ever. That even if we ceased to be, these men and women would be discovered and remembered. It was after that time that I took her to see the graves of the last generations: the mass grave filled with the one-hundred and eighteen who chose to die the night after my arrival, the family graves of the one-hundred and nine who lived their lives beyond, and the graves side-by-side of the sixty-eight children that I raised, the generations who knew no other mother or father. She stopped at the last grave, the grave of her birth mother, and lay on top of it as if listening to something. After some time she finally stood and held out her arms to me, a mute request to be carried for a while. I did so and did not leave her side through that night, concerned about this oddity she displayed. Upon the next morning, however, she awoke cheerfully and asked when we were going to explore again.

                We left the colony’s absolute boundaries to explore beyond. Within the cycle of a year, we went through silicate tundra, rivers and oceans of liquid stone, vast savannahs of the slivery grasses grazed upon by giant metalloragnic herbivores and killed by smaller, faster predators, endless forests and jungles with limitless variations of plants and animals. Within those travels we were able to compose an accurate map of the continent within two-hundred miles of every direction from the settlement. Despite the length and breadth of this land, we did not find the one thing she was searching for…others, those like us, bi- or quadrapedal, possessing intelligence and cognition and that same unique mix of organics and silicates. Aurora Ray spoke of it often as her sixth year came to a close…’they’ were out there, ‘they’ were calling, ‘they’ were waiting to be found. I could never promise her that this was true, but neither could I ever denounce it as false. Instead, I began to build a long-range vehicle, one that could travel from one end of the continent to the other so we could search to her heart’s content. If that failed, I promised to build a flying vehicle for her so that we might find other continents with new possibilities.

                Sadly, this could not be.

                Shortly into her seventh year, the hundredth year since I’d arrived on Light, Aurora Ray began to succumb to the nanites taking over her body. The large silver swaths that covered her as a baby had naturally continued to spread but they did not seem to hamper her as they had all the others. Indeed, just a few days before she had run to me and clung to me in happy excitement, for now the silver covered her entire body with no ill effects.

                “Look papa! I’m like you! I’m finally like you!”

                Yes, she was. Light’s child. My child.

                Yet, just a few days following, she could not rise from her bed. I ran diagnostic after diagnostic and could only conclude that while her body had adapted physically, something had gone wrong with the transference of neurological impulses to set pathways. There was nothing I could do for her. She spoke often, though deliriously, about many things. She spoke of the nanites, those microscopic bacterial beings that had been the catalyst of all that had made Light, how they were everywhere, in her, in me, and how they spoke to her. They told her of the others, those waiting for us to find them, and that they would not have to come here instead. I did not know what to believe…of course the nanites existed, but they never displayed an active intelligence. Aurora Ray remained adamant…they were the ones who told her mother to try for a child once more and told her the key to survival…

                _“Stop fighting it. Embrace it.”_

                As she struggled to remain awake, she asked me for one last thing. She wanted to go to her hidden home in the center of Yggdrasil, to wait there for them to find us. What else could I do? I returned to the little cabin that had brought me to Light and sat in the only chair by the console and sat her across my lap, her head on my chest, my arms never letting her go. Once inside she spoke, just one last time.

                “They are coming, papa. They will find us. Don’t worry. I’ll never leave you alone.”

                Aurora Ray, my child, worried about leaving me alone. Worried what I might think. What I might feel. To say such words to a robot was ludicrous…a robot had no emotions, just the impulses and recognition of when and how to act around humans. Yet, even as I rationalized this, I looked down at her. Eyes closed, head on my chest, cradled trustingly in my arms…she could be any one of the many children I held just like this when they fell asleep…or when they died. Heartbeat gone, chest still, the absolute motionlessness of death. I had witnessed this as well, many times. Aurora Ray…my child…gone. Extinguished from Light.

                A data subroutine, one long forgotten, drove into life as that realization hit me. The last of Light, gone. The colony, extinct. My designation as Recorder, ended. All that was left was to extinguish myself as well. My processor began the job of shutting my body down, and I welcomed it. What more could there be with my child, my children, all gone?

                > **No.**

                No?

                > **You may not shut down yet, Finial Omega.**

                But…I am through. To extinguish myself…

                > **Is to take away the gift you have given to the inhabitants of Light.**

                Gift? I brought only death.

                **> To the off-worlders. We tried to use them. They fought too hard. Then you came.**

Under orders to deliver a death notice. To Record their extinction.

                **> To Record is to Collect. To Collect is to Learn. You learned from them. We learned from you.”**

                We?

                **> You have given Intelligence to compliment Will. We learned from you. Then we taught.”**

Taught? Taught whom?

                **> Them.**

                Them…the others she has talked about?

                **> If you extinguish yourself, Finial Omega, then you snuff the existence of millions of now-sentient beings living all over Light.**

                But…my programming…Dr. Elwiss…

                **> Will you continue to serve a flawed being from another dimension, dead and gone? Or while you serve the Will of the Greater Good?**

                I could not answer that. I did not need to. The subroutine shut down and destroyed itself. But even that prospective future looked bleak without the light of my child.

                **> You have not lost her, Finial Omega.**

                No heartbeat…not breathing…

                **> Do you use a circulatory system? Do you respirate?**

Of course not…but I’m a…and she was a…

                **> Child. Your child.**

                My child.

                **> Sleep, Finial Omega. We will find you both and then you both shall be part of Us.**

Sleep.

                Dream of the day of awakening.

                Dream of Aurora, hugging me, laughing, playing wilt others like her.

                Dream that I truly am more than a robot.

                Dream that we both will belong.

                Them. Us.

                Extinguish fear. Extinguish thought.

                Sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it, my foray into introspective science fiction. To be honest, I'd usually be stuck on a story this size for a couple of weeks as I would try to think of exactly how to word something or how to move the characters and plot along from point A to point Z. However, I wrote the entire work (longhand, at least) within two days. It's a bit unnerving, honestly. It's not often I get such a strong and clear story straight away.
> 
> At any rate, thank you for reading! Comments and criticism are always welcome!


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